I'd rather see the game broken down into is current 3 sections, just defined a little more:

Public Contracts
Average Meta Level Cap of 4

Faction Warfare
Average Meta Level Cap of 7

Planetary Conquest
No Average Meta Level Cap


This would be easily identified and easy to understand as well as keep player counts at a comfortable level so you were not waiting a long time for matchmaking.

New players/Less skilled players will be happy proto stomping in public contracts is gone and veterans will not be affected that much as they can easily play pubs with lower level gear and still compete well and they can use their better gear in faction matches and PC...

Which is why the lower lvls are for public an why these are being suggested to avoid the issue of players running full proto in pub matches. I get how much players running officer gear love the fact they can run over tons of stuff no problems whatsoever but it's also what is ruining the game and really taking the fun out of it.

A meta lvl 4 avg in all pub matches doesn't mean you can't dominate, players will still use their Scr, their RR's and nova + cloaks but you won't have officer fits where scouts can still take on a militia heavy with ease and no worry. I had the unfortunate luck of running my Apex into an officer scout and while I unloaded my whole clip into him he still had 50% armor left and died during the reload.

The ideal way for matchmaking should be having proto fit squads matched against others and then randoms with identical meta avgs and game experience. It's not an easy task and I applaud CCP Rat saying he's working on code to make matchmaking work but that's how Dust is right now: one side wants to stomp to victory, another side gets stomped and either quits or that's it and then there's the few like myself that have played in 3 weeks at least 5 close matches and even if I was on the lost of 4 of those 5 it's actually fun when players are trying to win, utilize smart tactics to win and we're all "going for broke".

IF these types of matches can happen more often, it might actually bring back a lot of players to Dust again because even with the way proto stomp goes, trying to equalize it on both ends does mean that stomping isn't a given at that stage. I can always sit back and shoot ppl with a sniper for kills and then go Apex just for ISK but it isn't fun really.

Guys, I said average...as in average per fit.

Each piece of gear had a meta level between 0 and 9, average that out, not add it all together...

Are you being serious or are you trolling me?

I am saying it should not be based on total meta level, I am saying it should be based on average meta level.

Example, if your equipment meta level looks like this:
Item 1 meta level 2
Item 2 meta level 2
Item 3 meta level 2
Item 4 meta level 8
Item 5 meta level 3
Item 5 meta level 1
Item 7 meta level 3
Item 8 meta level 3
Item 9 meta level 3
Item 10 meta level 4

Total meta for the fit is 31
Average meta for the fit is 3.1

Since the average meta is under 4, it can be equipt in pubs (and all other game modes).

(Item meta [x+x+etc]/total item quantity=x)

There. Fuxking done.

Average meta ftw.