There is a lot of talk about whether tanks/dropships/vehicle missile are OP. But a huge oversight is that matches are throwing players from all skill levels together in matches.

We have players who are highly skilled and using equipment and tactics that are fit for 0.0 security battles mixed with players who hardly play and are still using mostly militia gear. This is causing a lot of inaccurate feedback since we, the players have to judge whether the gameplay is balanced when everyone is thrown together like this.

Without some way to split up the player base by skill and equipment how can we judge the balance of high and low quality gear and vehicles? Or is it the plan that once we have proper high and low sec planets players will still be sporting proto gear and vehicles to harvest new players for easy kills?

I'm wondering if you created multiple tiers of ambush and skirmish matches (each having a higher cap on SP and Isk gain) if this would alleviate a lot of the current balance issues. If players could earn twice as much for a tier two skirmish match the players with advanced gear would all move there and you could effectively split high and low skilled players. people with vehicles and forge guns could all duke it out, making for more interesting and rewarding matches for everyone.