Yes we are developing a new matchmaking system which adapts to your skill level, so as you get better you should be put into more challenging battles.

Having said that we don't think matchmaking has a place for all battles, this is New Eden after all. We are working on plans to expand both faction warfare and planetary conquest to more players, hopefully providing a more "gloves off" battle for those that like that sort of thing.

Just to clarify by skill level I don't mean skill points, I mean actual battle effectiveness. In practical terms this could be due to your gear, your skill points, the design of your fittings or choice of weapons, whether you are playing in a squad, whether you use voice comms, whether you are using your preferred input device, how good your internet connection is, your situational awareness of the battle field, how good you are at aiming etc etc.

The true test of good matchmaking will be if the prediction on how effective you and your team will be against another can adapt to a lot of these difficult to track variables. Right now we are experimenting with a few different ways of doing this and the simulations are looking promising so far.

To the point about scaling rewards, we actually do adjust the reward payout based on the gear used in battle. This doesn't vary that much at the moment because we have quite mixed battles but in theory if the matchmaking can produce higher tier battles then I would expect to see higher tier payouts. This is something we will probably have to review once the new system is in place.

One of the problems with DUST is that we have no equivalent to low sec and null sec, like they do in EVE.

In EVE high security levels protect the lower level guys. Lower security levels give the upper level guys, with much better equipment and SP, more opportunity to reap greater rewards for the greater risk of lower security space.

In DUST, we are all in the same big pot of guys trying to make a buck.

I'm not sure how to give a similar balancing mechanism in DUST.

There aren't enough of us to cover the whole EVE universe.

Making more tiers outside of the academy might help. It could be based on SP or equipment levels. Of course there would also be wide open tiers where anyone could fight with any type of equipment.

Perhaps the reward system could be used to stratify folks a bit better? Jobs in high security space might offer lower ISK rewards and jobs in low security space might offer higher ISK rewards. Expensive proto gear couldn't be replaced easily if proto gear can't make money. Penalize SP for losing too many clones to discourage people from playing militia gear in these matches.

Perhaps a list of battles could be generated which show the security level for each battle. Before each game starts a player might wish to decide which security level he could fight in. Proto gear, or recent academy graduates could be banned from high security and low security jobs, respectively. This would make sense because an EVE corp would not want to pay the higher costs for proto armed mercs (who have higher overhead) in high security space, where the jobs would be much easier (CONCORD pretty much keeps things quiet and prevents big, expensive wars).

Make fewer NULL cannons, CRUs, available clones, drop areas and turrets in low sec, so people have to be more aggressive and more likely to use better suits.

Penalize players who use up a lot of clones if they wear militia gear in low sec space by reducing their SP.

Maybe make hackable objects have different difficulties in different security types of space, so only proto suits can hack harder objectives and only lower tier suits can hack easier objectives.

In any case, I hope they can figure something out. We are eating our young in pubstomping matches.

Oh, and fix the AFK issue. That would help, too.


Munch

If the tiers are flattened out as you're supposing, then there will be a lot of, "If tier two isn't better than tier one, and tier three isn't better than tier one or two, then there's no point in skilling up."