Adapt or Die

the ultimate goal here is to
1) provide roughly evenly matched combat between players and teams as a whole
2) prevent new players from being slaughtered by much more experienced players, and introduce a much more sloped experience curve (but the learning curve can still be steep)
3) keep these "brackets" populated, so you don't see the EXACT same people over and over in the smaller brackets, and so queues don't take friggin forever.

i envision a few possible things
-make a "recruit" backet. everyone under 2mil (or whatever) SP must play in this bracket, and everyone above cannot, and they can only use militia/standard gear. this is so everyone starts on the exact same footing and there is NO curbstomping newberries. after you get over this sp limit, you are released into the game proper, much wiser and hopefully more addicted to the game!

-make security level brackets. highsec, lowsec, nullsec. you can choose which brackets to play in but the SP and ISK rewards of the brackets are very different. highsec provides chump sp and chump change isk. nothing big, but a good starter zone. Lowsec is better, and nullsec is the best but also the riskiest (tons for winning, very little for losing).

-make security level brackets that are also gear capped. basically the same as above, but any fits that don't abide by the rules of that security space are invalid during the fight (for instance, nothing above standard gear in highsec, lowsec up to advanced gear, and anything you want in nullsec) this could also use meta-level of items as a determinant

-just do straight up SP based match making. all it uses is your total applied SP and matches you as close as it can with others. this prevents any vets from newbie stomping, but can also prevent friends from playing together

-like above, but with win/loss rate, or some other measure of success. again, it may prevent friends from goofing off together.

none of these would apply to factional warfare matches or corp matches

My suggestion for matchmaking was to have each match have a standardised Regional War Value which is a certain amount of ISK that either-

Established the total amount your dropsuit / fittings can cost and there for only players spending say 25,000-50,000 ISK on their dropsuits can deploy.

Or the total of ISK costs of both teams.

I understand both of these ideas might be difficult to implement but I imagine that is a system mercenaries would use.

Why mobilise higher grade equipment to a zone where Advanced stuff would suffice the job. If we werent spending in game money or using proto stuff as a vanity boosters then perhaps people would care about how much they spend a match.

We also want to make sure that new players have a fighting chance against more skill point rich players ...

Best regards,
- CCP Blam!