TL;dr version: If someone has a character with over 1 million SP or something similar to that, any new character they make does NOT go to the academy. This prevents veteran player abuse of new players in the academy while still allowing for new players to make different characters and experiment with them in a friendly environment.

So, I have a confession to make. Every couple of months when Dust really starts to wear on me, I make a new character in my unused third slot, and I try absolutely ridiculous tactics or a weapon/suit I haven't messed with to amuse myself without having to worry about instantly dying or wasting SP. Then, after a couple of days, I delete the character and return to grinding SP for whatever I'm working on. And I never really worried about ruining the new players experience because I would generally break even in KDR and try to promote teamplay through excessive use of my needle.

Great story, what's the point? Today, I decided to try out that much debated weapon, the flaylock pistol, so I made a character and jumped in. And this is what I found:

A third to a half of the players in the matches had to have been playing Dust for a good amount of time outside of the Academy. How can I tell? Well I'm looking at you guy who went 18-2 in a Heavy suit running a Gek, the 14-0 with an NT-511 camping in the red line, the 6 of you trying to run people down in LAVs, etc. In the past there might have been 1 or 2 players who did well which I figured was either an incoming experienced FPSer or someone starting a new alt and trying to get out of the Academy. But not the top 5 on each side going 12-3.

I think perhaps this has been mostly caused by the current Mordu's challenge. Players who are unable to compete in normal matches or are simply to lazy have reverted to slaying new players in the academy, hacking objectives, etc to meet their quotas, but basically destroying what little new player experience this game has. However, I have realized from this experience that no veteran player needs to return to the academy ever for any reason.

This is easily fixed by simply locking accounts out of the academy once they have a character that has hit a certain threshold, for example 1 million SP. I'm not sure what a balanced number would be to keep experienced players out, but allow for new players to make a few characters to try different builds before settling in. Anyways, I'm sure someone out there with more experience can perhaps polish this idea and hopefully CCP will take notice.

New PSN account. Create new player. Your proposed fix circumvented.

New PSN account. Create new player. Your proposed fix circumvented.

ya know, he's got a point

Noobs will always find a way to ruin everyone's experience.