We've all been thinking about this for a long time. The solution that seems the best compromise for good pub play/keeping friends together is:

Allow squads in pubs, but impose a metalevel limit on the individual squad members for the duration of the match. Fittings above the metalevel cutoff would be unavailable from the fitting screen, we could just gray them out.

Solo players would face no meta restrictions. If a solo player in higher meta gear wants to join a squad they can do so but will become meta-restricted for the duration of the match.

We'd get better gameplay out of it, squads would still be powerful because teamwork, anybody choosing to run proto would be taking a calculated risk, and the teambalancer/matchmaker's jobs would get easier.

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Calculating the metascore of a loadout.

The principle here is to make high meta gear more 'expensive' in terms of metascore. Answer is simple and easily tweakable - just cube the meta of each item in the loadout, suit, weapons, equip, nades, modules - add it all up and that's the fitting's metascore.

e.g. a STD weapon would cost 1-¦ = 1, an advanced weapon would cost 3-¦ = 9 and a proto weapon would cost 5-¦ = 125.

So a Dragonfly scout fitted with all STD gear would have a metascore of 10(1 for the suit, 4 for slots, 2 for weapons, 2 for equip, 1 for nades).

A G/1 scout fitted with all ADV gear would have a metascore of 99(9 for the suit, 45 for slots, 18 for weapons, 18 for equip, 9 for nades).

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Setting the metalevel cuttoff for squads is the last piece of the puzzle, and also easily tweakable as we get experience with this mechanic.

Given the power multiplier of squads, a metalevel cuttoff of 90 should get us good gameplay in pubs.

With a mechanic like this we could keep 6 man squads, if we wanted to.

This sounds awful.

Don't ask for a metalock then ask for exceptions.

If you run solo you get exempt?

That's not metalock it's punishing people for running with friends.

Who does the power advantage go to, the proto-wearing solo or the adv-wearing squad? Answer is obvious. Nothing to be afraid of here.

And that's the most self-serving copout I have seen so far

If a match is locked to standard, ALL players should be locked to standard.

No exception.