You could just put the gear restriction on the suits themselves. A standard level suit doesn't have much room to play with, which would probably be enough to keep people from abusing high level gear to farm newbies. You could try putting that balac's on a standard level suit, but you'll die the moment something sneezes at you. It's simple enough to explain that they could have Dust's version of Aura on the barge actually explaining that this battle only allows militia and standard level suits, or whatever.

That's all you've got to say? No better suggestions then? Helpful.

If you made it just a gear based mechanic, vets could still make use of the masses of passive skill buffs they get. WP is the best way of ensuring that the characters genuinely are new.

The game isn't as much about SP as you think.... top end players not only have a year of experience under their belt, but are able to dominate any random pub match in just militia gear.

I'd say talen is 25% Skill Points, 75% actual skill in Dust 514.

you are deluding yourself if you think sp and gear makes no difference lol, put one you in all militia gear and another you in all proto, you know whats going to happen?

the you in proto is going to push your **** back in lol. the massive disparity in sp and gear is the reason very few new players stick with this game

if folks cant see the reason for the abysmal player count is because of the massive disparity in sp and gear then you are silly.

if you dont want a seperate play list where anyone can join but are restricted to the same level of gear as everybody else,
you are not as good as you think you are and are just trying to protect your i win button.

if you cant see that a seperate playlist would be good for the game longterm by making every suit, weapon and vehicle relavent
to the new player vastly increasing the different ways to play without sinking millions of sp into just one suit or weapon, then again you are silly.

if you think throwing new players to the wolves after hitting so many wp, sp or some other made up number is a good idea, enjoy the same garbage player numbers we have today.

just sayin

The game isn't as much about SP as you think.... top end players not only have a year of experience under their belt, but are able to dominate any random pub match in just militia gear.

I'd say talen is 25% Skill Points, 75% actual skill in Dust 514.

if folks cant see the reason for the abysmal player count is because of the massive disparity in sp and gear then you are silly.

if you dont want a seperate play list where anyone can join but are restricted to the same level of gear as everybody else,
you are not as good as you think you are and are just trying to protect your i win button.

if you cant see that a seperate playlist would be good for the game longterm by making every suit, weapon and vehicle relavent
to the new player vastly increasing the different ways to play without sinking millions of sp into just one suit or weapon, then again you are silly.

if you think throwing new players to the wolves after hitting so many wp, sp or some other made up number is a good idea, enjoy the same garbage player numbers we have today.

just sayin

I like this idea as long as the cap kicks it at 5,000,000.

By the way our initial thought based on advice from the CPM is to use total war points not skill points. One the of the problems with skill points is you earn them passively, so if you roll an account and leave it inactive for a while you will eventually end up out of the academy without playing any battles. We feel that war points is a better indicator of actual game experience which also happens to scale with proficiency.

5 million and under, cause that's just the beginnings of a good kit. With 4m, you're still gonna get slaughtered by proto-dudes

Instead of SP or WP caps, can we just use avg Meta level of the gear your using. Militia gear tends to be either meta level 0 or 1. Beginner matches set avg meta level <= 1. Even if higher SP players come into the matches, they will be using the same level of equipment as everyone else, with only a slight advantage.

On Tuesday 14th of May we will be enabling a special instant battle queue for new players called the Instant Battle Academy. Entry to these battles will be limited by total war points earned per character and will prevent older players from joining. New players will not be presented with the existing instant battle queues however they can join a squad with veteran players and be pulled into other battles. Faction warfare and planetary conquest battles will also still be available to new players.

This is a first step at improving the new player experience. We are also working on a vastly improved matchmaking system which is designed to better separate players based on their actual skill level instead of just isolating new players. We will hopefully be rolling that out in an expansion later this year.

You may notice I have not mentioned the exact criteria for being a new player and I am very interested in hearing how many skill points, war points, battles or any other metric you would use to determine what constitutes a "newbie". Remember the goal is to give new players enough time to understand the game not necessarily become proficient at it. So if you have any thoughts on that please reply here.

That could work, only with one pitfall, though.

Alot of people, including myself only play skirmish, and as such have very low WP, as it is hardly ever recorded unless you win / lose via clone depletion.

So would I, with my piddling 1000 WP, but 7 million SP, full proto gear and officer gear be put in with the new guys?

If so, it could end up being a bunch of high SP skirmishers stomping new players.

I am going to follow this up, I saw a fix go in this week for what looked like that problem but I'm not sure when it will be deployed. Suffice to say yes the war points will need to be updated correctly for the Academy queue to work.

CCP Nullarbor said the following here in relation to your concerns:

On Tuesday 14th of May we will be enabling a special instant battle queue for new players called the Instant Battle Academy. Entry to these battles will be limited by total war points earned per character and will prevent older players from joining. New players will not be presented with the existing instant battle queues however they can join a squad with veteran players and be pulled into other battles. Faction warfare and planetary conquest battles will also still be available to new players.

This is a first step at improving the new player experience. We are also working on a vastly improved matchmaking system which is designed to better separate players based on their actual skill level instead of just isolating new players. We will hopefully be rolling that out in an expansion later this year.

You may notice I have not mentioned the exact criteria for being a new player and I am very interested in hearing how many skill points, war points, battles or any other metric you would use to determine what constitutes a "newbie". Remember the goal is to give new players enough time to understand the game not necessarily become proficient at it. So if you have any thoughts on that please reply here.