I want to get as much feedback and Idea's as possible before I make a actual post on Feedback and Ideas to deliver to the Devs.

Please keep in mind that scaling according to Skill points or gear alone really won't work without it over-complicating the game. Why?

Skill points are accured over time so anyone who has more than 1 million skills points will always be 1 million skill points ahead of the player unless he purchases boosters (if both players play the exact amount of time). Now there are more variables in place than simply time spent playing but we'll keep it simple for now as the end result will mostly remain the same as the early players will in most scenario's have more skill points.

Gear is not a reasonable means to balance matchmaking systems because players could initially change into prototype gear during combat anytime you wish given how you can create fits in the field. So essentially a player could play militia and than create a fit before spawning with full prototype gear.

So why is matchmaking balancing important for Dust 514?

Well Dust is a harsh place in the universe of New Eden but New players will find this as a difficult wall to overcome. Many Vets can agree the game was at its funnest when everyone was struggling to compete in equal terms and than when you see one prototype players everyone either focus on him immediately or flee to survive.

Competition is healthy as history has taught us, its was pushes us to become more competitive and strive for greatness, but if Competition is unattainable for new players or if Vets have no new competition to face (since new players serve as no threat to them) Dust will struggle to increase its player base.

Now should that mean Vets must handicap themselves to fit the needs of the New players... No...
So I want people to give me Only constructive Idea's to filter into a single post to CCP about matchmaking so new players and Vets have a means to grow together. We all want to make this game achieve its goal, so post a idea.

(Note If you have a constructive argument why Gear and Skill points are a good matchmaking system leave a post with a detail explaination how you would balance with pro's and con's to it).

The problem is that effective matchmaking requires a sufficiently large pool of players. Right now, each game mode splits that pool. Each regional server splits the pool further. Most suggestions I've seen effectively introduce new game modes, splitting it further still.

The solution? Contact matching.

CCP need to get rid of the current system that requires players to pre-select mutually exclusive options. Contract matching allows players to select all the game variants they are willing to play, simultaneously, and then it creates matches to satisfy as many of those selections as possible.

I'd then add reduced payouts (based on the sec status of the system the fight is in) and allow people to play at the highest level they are comfortable at.

The problem is that effective matchmaking requires a sufficiently large pool of players. Right now, each game mode splits that pool. Each regional server splits the pool further. Most suggestions I've seen effectively introduce new game modes, splitting it further still.

The solution? Contact matching.

CCP need to get rid of the current system that requires players to pre-select mutually exclusive options. Contract matching allows players to select all the game variants they are willing to play, simultaneously, and then it creates matches to satisfy as many of those selections as possible.

I'd then add reduced payouts (based on the sec status of the system the fight is in) and allow people to play at the highest level they are comfortable at.

Several points here:
1. We need an optional 2nd tier academy mode for players under around 5 mill SP. This is critical, but I consider this separate from the matchmaking topic.

2. We don't need tiers by gear or SP (other than point 1) this fractures the player base and will result in crazy wait times, or would require removing game modes to make work.

3. Because the number of players is low, the most important aspect to focus on is making team A and team B have relatively equal power. Too often I see two full squads from good corps on one side, and randoms on the other. I always wonder how much differently the match would have gone if those squads were fighting against each other instead of being on the same team. This won't fix all of the problems, but getting this part right should help a lot and at least make matches less one-sided.

4. The big picture solution is to give each player a "Matchmaking Quotient." This is a number between 0.0 and 1.0 designed to represent how talented you are as a player. The number is invisible to us, but CCP's servers use it to make good matches. It factors in SP, average WPs per match, weighted K/D (the better the player is that you kill, the more that kill is weighted), ISK efficiency, average rank at the end of a match, win/loss, etc. There should be a strong bias for average rank (in an ideal matchmaking system most players should be in the top half 50% of the time and the bottom half the other 50% of the time--that means it's working).

There can also be penalties built in for pub stomping. If your final WP tally exceeds the median WP from your team by some percent (say 400%) then you will get a boost to your matchmaking quotient (forcing you to play harder opponents in the future). Likewise, if you do poorly your Quotient will drop and you'll be matched with easier players. Eventually you will hit an equilibrium and your quotient should be a reasonably good barometer for how good you are at DUST. If we had a stat like this, coding the matchmaker itself should be pretty easy, as there are widely published algorithms for this sort of thing.

I do want to stress though that focusing on getting team A and team B to be as even as possible should be the first priority, along with getting an academy mode in place to help NPE.