On a related "stomp mentality" that I find absolutely pathetic.

Story time:

I was playing as a new character this morning, to try out the lower Mu bracket.

After a while, I start seeing familiar names on the killscreen, going maybe 20/5, which is basically an exit criteria on its own.

I got curious, and looked up the top ranking players on both sides for my matches.

They were ALL alts of veteran players, freshly created today!

Not only that, but I could see all of their second alts, were scheduled for removal.

So tomorrow, they will have a fresh alt, and schedule today's alt for removal.

I am competitive, but what drives players to do this, slaughter players that are in many cases patently helpless?

The Academy is for new players to get their bearings, relatively risk free. Learn the maps, drop an uplink, spawn on uplink, try out the starter fits, scan, and hack.

Whatever, just writing this makes me furious. Just thought I would share that some will go to incredible lengths to grief, or pad their self esteem.

Allow the academy to only be visited once per ACCOUNT instead of based on character age.

Sure, you can make a second PSN account, but that is more difficult and requires a separate sign-in. That might discourage this kind of behavior.

It seems based on feedback that the issues only are being experienced by the upper tiers of the Vets, aka the equivalent of the players who have to wait 10 or so min in Leauge / CS. Lower levels seem to have no issue with getting into games based on alt / friend experience. (And those matches are well balanced)

Perhaps the only issue is working on the higher level brackets?

On another note, i like this less crowded matches, 10v10 or something like that would be perfect.

A full milita squad of vets WON'T beat out a full proto squad of vets. This is delusional, and PC should be an example of this. Your new matchmaking is placing vets against vets, I'll give it that. But your matches are still very lopsided because when one chooses to run the best of the best while another needs to make a little isk, it should be obvious who will win.

When I run milita or basic gear, I have to play at the top of my game to down a single proto suit. Because often I won't hold the eHP to take that proto weapon, and my basic weapon won't have the damage to down his eHP in a reasonable time.

With dust you DO have tiers of power, and I don't think you should be ignoring that fact.

A STD squad VS a STD squad IS even. A STD squad VS a PRO squad is NOT evenly matched in the least bit.

I'm sure the newbs are having a MUCH better time of it. Which is a very good thing as those are the lifeblood of this game.

We are still doing experimentation, and are now increasing the refill ratio (which is also a factor of not being put into a lost battle), you can't have it both ways guys

To prevent people from leaving, you need to fix the people getting dropped from squad deploy issue!

To prevent people to drop because of hard matches, we should have a coresponding stat, call it the contract violation ratio.

To further incentivize not leaving a match, this stat should influence your payout, so if you leave regularly, you will get less ISK per battle. If you constantly stay in, you will get more ISK. Together with the increase in warpoints for actually pushing the objective, this should hopefully give enough incentive to neither leave, nor AFK in the redline. If people stay for more than two thirds of the match in the redline, they should get no payout whatsoever. And yes I think sniping (in a tank or as infantry) is not helping your team enough to justify any payout!

Scotty is having issues right now (for me at least).

Sat in queue for Ambush for ~5 minutes. Got the MM Error Message.
Re-queued for Ambush. Got the MM Error Message.
Queued for Skirm. Got the MM Error Message.

Typed to see if others were having problems.
Scotty pulled me from MQ without warning into an Ambush match.
Scotty then pulled me from the Ambush match and returned me to MQ.
Scotty then pulled me from MQ without warning in Skirm match.
Scotty then pulled me from the Skirm match and returned me to MQ.
A few seconds passed between each pull.

:: Relogging ::

Matchmaking I NOT working for vets.
I had the worst games EVER in Dust last night.
Not because I died a lot (I was on the side whit the most players most of the time)
I was simply bored, there was NO action at all players just ran and jumped around like idiots
Some leave the game and some stars to suiside with cars on the tanks that where on the field.

Oh yes I almost forgot the Q time it was 3-5 minutes almost every time.

Matchmaking seem to be good, but there is still a step that must be done, it's probably the most important thing of all.

SERVER ZONE, it's clear that most of the community do not like to have people playing from different continents on their server.
All you need to do is locate the IP (many sites do that) and use the nearest server.

We are all tired to fight lag, we are all tired of immortal players and teleporting people.
This situation is only going against you, because if i get stomped by a player who don't reg hits, when i have the possibility i will stomp a player with less SP than me.

Technical aspects of the game are influencing players behaviour. It's normal that someone who is beaten by the other team wants his revenge and he will have his revenge on another player that can't defend himself.
This goes down step by step from the higher to the lower skilled player and the last one will cancel the game.

There is one for America, one for Asia and one for Europe.
The only problem is that people are selecting different server regions or that automatic server selection do not put them in the nearest server.

Anecdote: During BF3 beta, from Italy i was not able to join match on UK servers because my ping was too high for their standard. UK is relatively near. Imagine what happen we find japs or americans.

Don't even ask me to get a better internet, because it's not possible where i live, the one i have is already the best for the zone.

The problem (from a vets p.o.v.) is that as it is right now proto is absolutely required because every match is fought against top tier corps who only run proto. Too many players have these high mu scores which pit them against other vets, which is fine, however with no isk they have to run cheap fits which causes them only to die more while the rich players can just run proto 24/7 without a care. Yes, I'm one of those rich players, but most of the guys I run with aren't. So what am I to do? I feel like I can't run with my "friends" anymore because they're poor and running their cheap fits is causing us to get stomped. The only vets that are going to survive this new matchmaking are the extremely rich. Everyone else is going to get frustrated and leave the game.

Not sure what you mean by stacked, but I guess they could've left a merc behind. They do appear to join and leave several times throughout, but then again so do others. Guess that bug getting smashed asap would be very useful now it's causing problems with matchmaking

^ If this were to materialize ... idea!

* Add 1-2 minute wait in the warbarge
* Make the barge's map table interactive (walk up to it, press X, see overhead map)
* Default coms to "On" and "Team"

Given a minute or two to think about it, players would squad up before each battle. Having access to the overhead map of the battlefield in advance would give them something to talk about. This could make for a very interesting (and potentially exciting) pre-battle experience. Think two-minute drill.

I'm not big into coms, but I'd get into this. Perhaps more importantly, newer players would meet people and quickly learn the value of the squad.

^ This.

Get put into a half-finished match. Give it 100% anyway. Get wrecked.
Get paid ~60k Isk.

Pretty freakin' aggravating. I understand that Scotty has to fill the empty spots and all, but it still drives me crazy. Wish there was a way for payouts to account for the fact that players may arrive mid-match.

Will test. If he's right, I'm hoping the payout is really low.

Even so, EOM pay is determined by time-in-battle and relative WP. Even if the above concern were addressed, in most cases a merc who arrives halfway through is still going to get paid pennies regardless of his contribution.