I'll just leave this here.

I suppose the answer would be that the issue is complex. I would not like to see high skill players laying waste to everything because they find the weapon balance to be too easy but neither do I want to have the weapons etc so hard to use because they were balanced based on these high skilled players.

My instinct would be to balance based on the skill level of the majority but also create an additional connected environment, let's call it the competition level, where everything is balanced for high skills.

High Sec - learning environment and casual games
Low Sec - casual play and FW
Null Sec - PC and competitive egame environment

You will never get a real balance but you need to identify your revenue source and cater to them, I guess.

You forget one thing, and unfortunately thats the big picture:

Dust is NOT about pubmatches. It's about PC.
And there you see the big black guys. So if the game is meant to be pplaced focused on PC where everybody rolls out their best suits, why the heck should we try to balance the game on the average playerbase?

Dust is a hardcore game, if you want the EZ mode search for a different game.

Anyways, I understand and respect your opinion, and I know what you aim for, but like I said, the big picture behind dust is PC not Pub...

Balancing in DUST should happen in PC and not pub matches where you face a bunch of retards who dont know which end the bullet comes out of

The best thing the game could do is provide some kind of benefit for old players to group up with/train/skill up with/help new players so that they could close that technical skill gap ASAP.

I think the CPM gets this. Balancing/mechanics/core gameplay etc, can only go so far to give everyone the balance that is fair. What remains needed are tools for the corporation/player role in Eve called 'enablers'. Enablers are people who try to grow other players in the game and consistantly provide content to the communities that they manage.

Social tools, training environments, recommended skill training certificates/queues, linked/recommended fits, reimbursement programs, player made tutorials,

The problem is that the sense of progression in the game NEEDS to be there for it to be true to what DUST is meant to be.

What we need is more matchmaking options. The academy is a good start, but we need a more flexible system. The devs have done a good job in reducing the previously huge gaps between higher- and lower-tier gear, and the same has been done with reduced benefits from passive skills, but it would be stupid to balance everything out to a basic level.

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The argument SHOULDN'T be that starting gear should be able to compete with max-level upgraded equipment in equally-skilled hands. That would be stupid. What needs to be done is to allow players with lower SP count to fight against other similarly-leveled players.

They could divide the game into several matchmaking layers. When you first start off, there's the 2 million SP or 10,000 WP limit where you can only fight Academy battles. After that, you get to compete "properly" - but as your SP count rises, you get locked out of the lower-tier matchmaking options. You can choose to fight at your level within the lowest SP-based matchmaking tier, or you can step it up a little and try to compete against people with potentially more SP than you have. As you skill up higher, you have less options, but because lower-level players CAN throw themselves in the deep end, and because higher-level players wanting to learn a new playstyle will have to compete on your level, there will still be gear imbalances which let the high-tier players bring their shiny toys and show them off against weaker opponents.