I hear what you are saying and understand the desire for change, but let me put a few points forward: 1. THIS IS NOT TO BRAG BEFORE ANYONE GETS MAD, but I was a top 500 Trials player last season and I play Trials regularly with above-average teammates each week for fun. I am mentioning my stats and who I play with so if anyone cares to check, you know where I am coming from with my opinion and thoughts, NOT to brag/flex. I am not a no-life, a tryhard, nor am I a YouTuber or streamer with an incentive to lie to you for money (they all do). I play PvP for a few hours each weekend and that's it. That is the honest truth. 2. Assuming you get permanent Freelance Trials, you will have to accept the fact that your teammates will likely always be absolute garbage and your experience will be the same, if not objectively worse in Freelance than it would had you gone to LFG/your clan/friends and made a team of three for normal Trials. You will also have no communication, and if you do, it will be the garbage quality of in-game voice chat with randoms who you have never met, have no idea how they play, have no idea what they are using, and will have to either adapt on the fly or lose. This is proven by the absolute garbage MM/complete lack of SBMM in freelance Competitive, which is a dead game mode and completely abandoned/forgotten by Bungie (I was also top 500 for Comp last Season too). I extensively played Freelance Competitive (and exclusively did and still do), and in nearly every game, my teammates have the IQ of a boulder, and I either carry them 4-0 or lose and get hit with a massive ELO penalty because I couldn't carry two other thumbless Timmies. It is honestly some of the most frustrating and unnecessarily sweaty gameplay you will ever play in D2 when you're fighting three good players stacked against you, and your teammates are throwing your lives and losing rounds for you. By adopting and playing in Freelance Trials, you are WILLINGLY giving up any and all control you have over the potential quality of your teammates. Make of that as you will. To me, that is an unacceptable tradeoff, as I have experienced in Competitive. 3. Trials' MM is also completely broken and I went on a 38-1 win-streak this past Friday while playing on a Flawless Confidence card. The most common teams I fought? Either three solos who were barely a 1.00 K/D overall with below-average stats, or a team of three similarly-skilled players to the solos. TO CLARIFY: I DO NOT WANT EASIER MATCHES NOR SUPPORT TRIALS' CURRENT UTTERLY BROKEN MM. The people who I and my teammates fought had NO business fighting me and had NO chance of winning, and I was NOT matched against similarly skilled players. The fact that I have to use a third-party app (Trials Report) to check my opponents' skill is also embarrassing. Every match I fought was against people who were NOT similarly skilled as me and my teammates, it was not even close, and I verified this using Trials Report for every game. Freelance Trials will do NOTHING to fix this, and may honestly make it worse. If you think Trials' MM is bad now, wait until you split the player base into two separate game modes. 4. The Flawless pool is useless and does not work when any serious Trials sweat will INTENTIONALLY AVOID going Flawless so they can stay in the general matchmaking pool and farm lesser skilled teams for free loot and stat-padding. They DO NOT care about the loot, I want to make this clear. Bungie gives these people NO incentives for limiting their matchmaking pool, and I do not blame them for abusing this hilariously exploitable matchmaking system. Is it unfair and scummy? Absolutely. But this is what Trials is and has always been: a spotlight on the absolute worst of the worst of Destiny, its sandbox, and its community. 5. A Freelance option goes against the spirit of Trials (yes, I know you're laughing, but take this seriously). Trials was sold to us as a competitive, serious, team-based 3v3 activity where you fight similarly skilled teams to compete for the best of the best PvP loot and bragging rights. Does it live up to that promise? Absolutely NOT. HOWEVER, I still support the GOAL of Bungie and Trials to want a team-based PvP activity since Competitive was supposed to be this as well, but ultimately was killed off by Bungie and abandoned. Competitive is basically diet Trials, but worse in every way. Freelance Trials, in my opinion, goes against the spirit of a team-based competitive PvP activity and I fully believe that randomly matchmade teams is the worst possible option for a semi-quality "serious" PvP experience. You will want to know how your teammates play, how you will play with them, what strategies you will use, how to counter your enemies, how to communicate with them (BIGGEST FACTOR BETWEEN WHO WINS AND WHO LOSES IN TRIALS = GOOD TEAM COMMUNICATION), etc. etc. Freelance takes ALL of this away from you, as well as ANY control you have in your teammates. Do you really want this to save yourself the minor trouble of finding a team? And ask yourself seriously: if you cannot make a pre-made team for Trials, is Trials really the right game mode for you to be playing? I KNOW THIS IS AN ELITIST STATEMENT, BUT TRIALS IS NOT MADE NOR INTENDED FOR EVERYONE, AND THAT IS OKAY. 6. As I said before, Trials is an inherently ELITIST game mode. It is made for the no-lifes, the tryhards, the basement dwellers, the streamers, the YouTubers, and the recov/boosting scum of the game to duke it out and get the best loot in a sweat-fest tryhard mode. It is NOT made for you to improve as a player or to get better. That, in my opinion, is for Competitive now. The entire environment of Trials PUNISHES failure and is not a good learning environment to get better as a player. Trials is not made for everyone, just like Raids are not made for everyone, and that is okay with me. If I am not good enough for Trials, this should be my motivation to improve and get better as a PvPer, or to get better as a Raider, etc. etc. IF YOU ARE NOT SKILLED IN TRIALS, WHILE TRIALS HAS MANY PROBLEMS WITH IT, DO NOT BLAME BUNGIE AND INSTEAD USE IT AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO SELF-REFLECT AND BECOME A BETTER PLAYER. When I was new to D2 and played Trials of the Nine, I got my -blam!- stomped. I was a purely average, bad PvPer. I fully admit this. My motivation to get better stemmed directly from those losses and the desire to earn Flawless loot myself, NOT pay someone to get it for me, and NOT get carried to it by some predatory streamer for clicks. Trials and its associated Adept loot, the Lighthouse, the emblems, the armor glows, the bragging rights, the Flawless seal and title, etc. etc. are all, in Bungie's own terms, ASPIRATIONAL. You should be aspiring to get better as a player and as a teammate to be able to earn that loot with your own hard work and skill. You should be aspiring to join the players who can honestly say they EARNED their loot from work and not paying a recov shark to do it for them. Many players will dismiss this and laugh at the idea of "earning" loot in a game. To them, I say that Trials, Raids, GMs, etc., or any video game with difficult content is not for you then. But for people who genuinely want to feel some kind of accomplishment and concrete feedback that they are improving and getting better, Trials is excellent for it. In the end? Are there many arguments for why Freelance shouldn't be added? Yes, and I have made some here from my point of view and experience. Do I support Freelance? Well, it wouldn't kill Trials, but it would hurt the spirit and the integrity/aspirational aspect of it. And in my opinion, if you desire a Freelance Trials, I do not believe Trials is for you. I will be fully honest about this. I do not like Freelance Competitive because it is a horrible experience, and Freelance Trials will take this and magnify it even worse. But for the people who do not care about integrity or aspirational activities, then there is no real reason why Trials should not have Freelance. It is ultimately up to Bungie to finally make up their minds on Trials' identity and stop flip-flopping on who should play Trials, who deserves Trials loot, and what that loot should mean to you as a player. I don't mean to insult anyone as a player, but this is my honest take on it all. Feel free to reply and talk with me about it if you want.

[quote]Putting people on a more equal playing field is NOT problematic.[/quote] So make GMs easier its not fair its so hard make it easier for PvP players to get adepts

Teams don't agree with that because they want easy wins

u know the minority in trials are the ones wanting freelance right

One could argue we shouldn't have to listen to the majority either, because the majority is not always right. Which is why [i]argumentum ad populum[/i] is considered a "logical fallacy."

They're not going to do it because that would make it accessible to more people, and Bungie can't keep the majority of people on the hamster wheel if everyone has access to modes that pay out higher quality loot in a reasonable time frame. Another way to look at it is, giving us what we want is a sub-optimal way to nurture addictions.

Bungie is catering to their No-life loser content creator community who play this game 24/7 and sweat their nuts off in trials. Then those same people are the ones who complain when they go against people who match their skill level.

Hot take : I don't think freelance will help trials. From my experience, freelance matches are WAY more sweaty than going into the playlist. I went into trials this week as a duo with a buddy of mine(we are both average PvP players, nothing special), and I'd say that the matches were pretty balanced. The worst part in my opinion is NOT the fact that you can go against a 3 stack but that I can match someone that teleports 5 steps back or have people on my team that leave intentionally, probably because they got their pinnacle, and only get a screen saying "OOPS, looks like you left a trials match, that's not very pog champ of you, please don't do it again UwU" as a penalty. I also think playing for 2-3 hours and spending 2/3rds of your materials only to get Poop-tier loot is also a big issue(Trials is not very rewarding in general in my opinion, I think having a chance to get drops in the end of matches no matter if you win or lose is something that we desperately need to grow the population).

I think it should be every other week. But not every week, you know?

Number 1 thing that can help Trials is more loot. More loot = more people playing = less sweaty matches. Bungie is only adding 1 new item per season, which is pathetic. You aren't going to get people playing, especially not consistently, with only 1 new item, in an end game mode with a brand new big expansion.

You're asking for a fair fight, correct? But isn't it true that a fair fight is a fight you could lose? Even if the fights are "fair", people are still going to complain about losing. I get it, nobody likes to lose. But a lot of people have a hard time accepting it.

Is it really that hard to make an LFG post? Options are available to all and you can easily find a team if you make a post. I don’t get this whole thing of people refusing to make an LFG team. Even if you suck if it’s your team, you make the rules. Freelance is a great way to get new players to see the mode and explore it, and it should stay… as an event mode once every 4 weekends.