I remember watching the live stream as Bungie announced ToO and thinking that, besides the completly scripted looking play (no one camped a single dead enemy), that it looked like a really awesome addition. Right up until they said they weren't going to find us teammates. Now here we are a year later and I've finally got an opinion on Trials besides "get rid of the shit because the babies who play cry nerf over everything", because I've finally actually[i] played Trials[/i]. My conclusion I've come to is that it is the single biggest wasted opportunity in the game. The thing with Trials is [i]it's actually really fun[/i], but the majority of the players of this game wouldn't know that because Bungie decided in their infinite wisdom to not include matchmaking. Much like not having it for raids, this meant that like the VoG, CE and KF, they were creating this content for a small minority of the player population. I work a lot and when I play, I don't want to have to work to group up to play, I just want to play. Without that option, I've run 2 VoG, a handful of CE, no KF, nothing beyond a couple level 32 PoE and until last week no Trials. JStevensontown lives Trials and he's playing all the time, but I never wanted to play because I didn't want to be a weak link after so long without playing it. Well he and CarnivalLaw wanted to run, so we gave it a go. The first holy shit moment was getting the passage coin and seeing all the Trials bounties (Which led to the question, why do they steal bounty spots from normal PvP bounties for ToO occasionally?) Then we started playing. We lost our first match, but then won like 6 in a row before dropping 2 to end our coins (we hadn't gotten boons) and not only were the matches fun as hell, the completed bounties and post-match rewards were awesome. In those 9 matches, I received Legendary legs, 2 Legendary gauntlets, a 308 hand cannon and probably 45 Marks and I thought, where the hell is this shit in the rest of the game? Normal PvP bounties don't give shit except for xp that barely moves the needle on the faction rep meter that takes forever to move up a level. Normal PvP post-match rewards are[i] maybe[/i] a purple engram every 10 matches or so and a weapon once a month if you're lucky. So I'm getting all these rewards for playing this fun game mode and it's suddenly no -blam!-ing wonder JS is always running it. Then Monday night JS, Draken Wolf and I ran it again. All these -blam!-ing babies shit their pants crying over this or that is OP. We just played. We didn't check opponent classes or weapons before hand. I used a Suros Scout and a Fusion Rifle and played Striker, we had no Doctrines, TLW or anything else people cry about and we did just fine. When we had to stop because of the time, we'd gone 5-1 and cost ourselves the one loss. So my question on this side of the experience is more so now than ever, why don't Bungie want[b] everyone[/b] playing this content? IB draws players in once a month that don't play any other time. PvE events could do the same if they'd put them in the rotation. But here is something that exists every weekend that could make players log in, and there's no doubt in my mind they would if they saw how rewarding and fun it is... And they squander it. I know the hard core ToO crowd will cry their little eyes out [quote]Randoms wouldn't talk[/quote] [quote]you'd get crappy teammates[/quote] [quote]randoms couldn't win[/quote] [quote]they'd give easy wins to Fireteams[/quote] Yadda -blam!-ing yadda. Well my answer is stfu and put the health and accessibility of the game ahead of your baby-ass bullshit. What matchmaking would do is allow anyone and everyone to try Trials. Beyond that, it would let people who don't have friends on or friends that want to PvP, to meet other players who they mesh with. Yeah, some groupings will get slaughtered, just like some Fireteams get slaughtered. But some will also play well together and become friends and add each other to play again. Then there's the competitive groupings. Up until match 5 give priority to random vs random and fireteam vs fireteam. If no matches open within 45 seconds, go first available by skill level. Shit doesn't get real in Trials until the final four matches anyway, so once you get to 5, it's strictly mm by current algorithms be it elo, coin record (currently flawless) or whatever they use. This would not only allow players who would never LFG to play, it would prevent Fireteams steamrolling randoms because they would only face those good enough to have won five matches already. ToO could be so much more than it is and it's sad to see such a wasted opportunity to make this game better. So I'm asking you Bungie to really take a look at what you have and ask yourselves if the game would be better with everyone able to play it. Then I want you to look at this great system of fun gameplay vs rewarding drops and ask yourselves why the rest of the game is nothing like it. Normal PvP bounties are a joke. I've never unlocked Shaxx's because of the stupid quest chain to run modes I can't stand. Normal PvP rewards and rep gains are garbage. Marks are too limited with just the daily and weekly normal PvP ones and for the most part the Crucible vendor weapons are meh and post match never drop. So that's it. I would love for others who have never tried Trials to get to experience how fun it can be, but that's up to you, Bungie.