Everyone:

I recently reactivated a second character that I had originally created for the womenfolk in my life, in an attempt to get them into Dust 514.

This second character has around 1 million SP total. Suffice to say, going from my primary character, which has 15 million SP, to a character with 1 million SP is an eye-opening experience GÇö one that was made all the more painful by a recent experience with that character in a Domination match.

Specifically, my team was composed entirely of players from corps with no name recognition. The other team, however, was composed *entirely* of well-known corporations with high SP players. Long story short, my team got our arses handed to us six ways from Sunday.

I can only imagine what it would be like for a gamer making his or her first foray into Dust 514 with such a low SP character, one who doesn't have a veteran character to fall back on.

Long story short, ****-poor match-making on CCP's part, combined with a mere 500,000 SP given to starting players, are two big reasons why the player base is as small as it is. Folks aren't going to invest much time GÇö or money GÇö into Dust 514 when they're getting their arses handed to them left and right once they exit the Academy matches.

One possible solution, in my mind, is to double the amount of starting SP given to new characters (1 million SP instead of 500,000 SP). Heck, maybe even more ... perhaps up to 2 or 3 million SP out of the gate. Any existing new players would automatically have their SP upgraded to the new "base" level, provided they haven't already surpassed it.

So, is that a viable idea, folks? If not, what ideas do you have that CCP might be interested in?