I think a much more elegant solution is for people to get a ranking based on how good they are, K/D ratio, amount of damage done, amount taken, accuracy with weapon, average rank in WP at end of match, modify these numbers for their favorite weapon, vehicle, suit types, and skill points and come up some final number that determines how "good" of a player you are.

Based on this number, matchmaking should try to assign 2 teams each with similar sums of the player's number. In other words, it's ok to have good and bad players, high and low skill point players on the battlefield as long as they're in roughly equal proportions for each team. This should keep the matches close and check pub stoming with having other people on your side that can counter them.

Additionally, pubstomping should be countered by making proto gear unaffordable to be used profitably. You should have to save up ISK in the pub matches using economical fits to be able to afford proto for important matches (or be willing to take steep losses to your wallet if you just want to have fun in the best gear in unimportant matches). Risk/reward.

AFKing also needs to be addressed for this system to work (since it will make good players appear artificially weaker than they are). This should be easy to track: how much damage to enemy players have they done? Are they looking left/right/up/down? Are they in close proximity to an objective? Are they gaining WP?

This data will look very different for a player just starting out as a sniper on the red-line with a crappy rifle, lots of sway, and not enough DPS to get kills/assists, and someone past the red-line crouch-walking into a mountain with a rubber-band on the joystick.

http://youtu.be/-mv_zxFjP6Q?t=20m42s

Now can everybody please stop posting about it until the next patch is released? I'm tired of seeing threads about stuff that's already being addressed.

Elegant isnt needed. We should have the option to fight how we want. High risk high reward or low risk low reward.

We already have this, it's called Planetary Conquest and Faction Warfare.

Making tiers based on gear really negates the whole point of gearing up in the first place. Matches should be fair, and by that, I mean both sides should have teams with roughly equal skill on each side. People seem to want safe pools to play in, and that goes against the entire ethos of New Eden. In EVE, a person with a billion isk ship can suicide gank the ship you've spent the first month saving up for in highsec for the LOLs, but there are major consequences (they're going to be out a lot of ISK) which deter this behavior. It should be similar in DUST. Proto suits should be 10x more expensive, and too expensive to waste in pub matches. I'd also support the idea of a 2nd tier to the academy where you'd be sheltered until you have your first 2 million SP or so. After that, all bets are off.

Elegant isnt needed. We should have the option to fight how we want. High risk high reward or low risk low reward.