Edit: Quick Summary - The uproar about no Raid Matchmaking is because on one hand Bungie says we should only play with friends for endgame, but on the other hand they haven't given us tools to leverage clans or make friends. Many players will be stuck between a rock and a hard place come endgame if one of the two issues isn't fixed. I get the idea behind not wanting to group up randoms to put them into a Raid. It makes sense. There are a ton of posts about it. The answer is for people to make friends in game throughout the process of playing and then they will eventually have a group to attempt the Raid with. OR join a clan and run the Raid with them. However, there is no easy way to make friends in this game. Here are our current methods and problems with them [b](I am not including the forums because the majority of players will never touch Bungie.net and the forums)[/b]: [b]Invite to Fireteam[/b] - The idea behind this is strong. Are you out in the world doing an activity and see someone doing the same thing? Awesome, invite them to a fireteam so you can use fireteam chat and work together. Maybe you will make a friend that will want to run endgame content with you when you reach that point. But there are oh so many problems... [i]Problems[/i]- When you joins a fireteam it shoots you back to orbit. How many people are gonna want to group up midway through an activity, only to have to go to orbit, come back down, and then travel back to the activity? Zero. A couple times of people dealing with that and they won't use this feature anymore. Which means people aren't going to be making friends. Additionally, I could never find where the fireteam settings were in game. I looked multiple times, but could never figure out how to "open" up my fireteam and make it public. [i]Solution[/i] - Don't force Orbit when joining fireteams. Make it easier to change fireteam settings. [b]PvP[/b] - I have made so many friends this way over the years in the various halos and such. I go into PvP by myself, find a good group, join their party and then we rock out for the rest of night. I add them to my friends list and there we go. This should be a powerful way to make friends in this game [i]Problems[/i] - There is no voice chat by default in PvP. And to get into a fireteam in the middle of PvP means you have to stop and go through the whole process mid-match, wasting valuable time. No one will do this. Which means post-match, who is going to want to add anyone to their friends list after a long chat-less game? Again, no one will. [i]Solutions[/i] - Automatic PvP team chat. Period. Full stop. This should already be in game and allow players to communicate and find friends and/or communicate that they want to join fireteams. [b]Tower/Social Emoting[/b] - So the idea with this is that we are all in a social hub interacting and dancing during downtime. This will be a great way to meet people. We can dance, sit, wave, and point. Good stuff. This is a nudge in the right direction. [i]Problems[/i] - With only 4 ways to emote, asking players to make friends and recruit for Raids is like asking NCAA College Coaches to recruit for their teams solely through Miming. Good luck with that. [i]Solution[/i] - More emotes. Let a player tag themselves with a flag that shows they are looking for a Raid/PvP/Strike/Exploration group so likeminded players can find them and group up. [b]Clans[/b] - This is probably the most promising way to make sure people have other players to do content with. Clans offer instant friends and a group of like-minded people to call upon when you are looking to do content that requires a group. [i]Problems[/i] - Clans are currently only joinable on this website. And even then, when in game, there is no listing of which of your clanmates are online! So players who don't frequent bungie.net (>75% of the playerbase) won't even know how to get into a clan. Those who do get into a clan, will have to go through the hassle of adding and removing friends from their friendlist to keep up with clanmates coming and going. [i]Solution[/i] - Have a clan player listing in the game. List who is online and maybe even implement a clan voice chat room so people can jump in and ask around about grouping. [b]Console Messaging[/b] - The most unwieldy and time consuming of all the ways to communicate with other players, players can send messages to each other in all of the zones. This would allow strong communication of intention to other players and hopefully lead to fireteam invites (with all of its problems) and eventually adding them to your network of friends. [i]Problems[/i] - This is incredibly time consuming and even takes the player out of the game most of the time. Typing on a controller is ridiculous and most of the time the other player has probably moved on by the time you've finished the message and sent it. This is not even considering that many players probably don't want to receive spam message constantly from other players while they are performing their activities. [i]Solution[/i] - Implement an in-game messaging system complete with default message capability. That way you could send a quick "Wanna Raid?" to a player. Doesn't solve the spam issue, but could solve the inherent problems with messaging on a controller. Overall, the ways to meet and actually connect with random people in this game is incredibly low and poor. In order to increase your player network to eventually have enough players to do Raids, the game literally gives you zero useful tools to do it.[u] If Bungie is not going to include Raid MM (which they shouldn't) then they definitely need to improve the above systems.[/u] I think the majority of the frustration with the lack of Raid MM comes from most people realizing that they aren't given any other effective ways in game to meet people and make friends. The current implementation is made to make it as hard as possible to communicate with others which in turns makes it impossible to make friends, which makes people frustrated at the lack of Raid MM. Bungie, either fix communication in the game OR add Raid MM. Otherwise many players who have the skill/gear to do Raids but lack the friends to run it with will run into frustration when they realize they were prevented from making friends and have no easy way to make friends in the game.