If everything between two players is equal, but one has 1% higher dps because of a skill, then the player with higher dps wins the fight. Ergo the only way to satisfy your aim is by making every player fully trained from day one.
Your idea about schools is basically picking a ‘class’ which they’ve deliberately tried to avoid. A new player is a blank slate with infinite choice. By giving them ‘classes’ you would be forcing them to make a choice before they even know how to make that choice and it would also be a choice they can’t take back.
And whilst i almost agreed to giving new players Tech2 weapons out of the box because i appreciate how useful that flexibility is, i remembered that new players shouldn’t be using expensive gear like Tech2 mods because more expensive losses means fewer re-ships and/or more time spent grinding.
New players should focus less on winning fights and more on learning the game and making allies. The best advice from veteran players has always been ‘buy tons of cheap ships and lose them in fights’ and never ‘you need more bling’.
CCP already upped the starting SP from roughly 55,000 to 450,000. They gave you instant access to prop mods, warp disruptors and webs…items you used to have to buy skill books for and train from zero. You used to have to train weapon support skills like surgical strike and rapid fire from zero. Fitting skills from level 2 instead of 4 like now…
Its not like i don’t think new starters could do with more skills. Like making Alphas wait over a week before they can use 5 drones and thus fill a Tristan’s drone bandwidth properly seems ridiculous to me, they should just start with drones to level 5…or better still, remove the skill altogether. I just want to demonstrate to you that it is not SP that is pushing away new players.