The game is no where near dead, 500 to 600 thousand daily players. Adding matchmaking to raids would fail, same as making them too easy. Currently Master raids are only done a handful of times by a player just to get the equipment (ship/sparrow/ghost shell) and no incentive would make them do it more given how tedious they are. Dungeons already dont require a mic (to be far half the raids dont either) Matchmaking is not a solution neither is removing the "requirement" for a mic as either way most players still wont raid. The only solution is to plug a mic in or find a compotent team that can do it with text chat. Matchmaking is not a solution to everything.

I agree with most of your train of thought. I think having easy versions of the raids, just like they did in D1, with simpler versions of the mechanics would be a HUGE benefit to the game. Here’s some of my ideas. Warning long read ahead. For all new easy versions of the raids :- 1. No revive tokens, unlimited revives. Keep the wipe timer mechanic though just lengthen it where possible. 2. Extend or remove enrage timers. 3. Allow guardians to be overlevelled to the same or greater extent as was the case in normal raids until you Bungled it Bungo!! So you do more damage and take less damage. 4. Lower the light level to get in to 1900. 5. Lower enemy combatants numbers by 10% and no champions. 6. Fewer drops from successful encounter completions on easy is obvious, however, that would mean Bungo would have to make normal and master drops way more rewarding. Here’s some examples of how the easier mechanics might work for some encounters that I have the most experience with. [u]CE. The Abyss (on easy.)[/u] 1. The Chalice. Extend the timer when you gain the enlightened buff from 7? seconds to 10-12 seconds before you die with the Chalice, to allow sloppier exchanges. 2. Fix the preservation points for the chalice so they don’t wander. 3. Lower the damage from the Pendulums. 4. Extend the Engulfed in Darkness timer to 1:30 to allow for mistakes. [u]VoG Oracles[/u] 1. Oracles take less damage to destroy. 2. Only do 3, 4 and 5 oracles. Keep all the potential spawn points and the order mechanic the same but just two less rounds. [u]VoG Templar[/u] 1. Templar can only teleport to the middle, front left and front right. No rear teleports. 2. Make the Cleansing spot more forgiving in the timing or allow individual cleansing with no penalty. [u]RoN. Cataclysm.[/u] 1. Sweeping Terror and Field of light buff extended to 55 seconds and 30 seconds respectively. 2. Only need kill one Psion to spawn Tormentor. 3. Lower the number of connections needed by 1 or 2 for each of the four waves. Or keep them the same as the first wave (4?) Now I know that this would be a lot of work for an already buggy game. If I worked at Bungie I’d suggest starting with VoG and CE. Mainly because they already have examples of how to make these encounters easier from D1. Now with all that being said, I still think that communication is still going to be key for teaching even these simpler mechanics. This means a mic. I know there are many excellent deaf gamers out there and I’ve played with a few over the years. But they knew all the mechanics backwards, knew their roles and either communicated through text to speech software, had a keyboard for their console or were on pc. And finally, I’m still not sold on the matchmaking for raids. I think it’s a terrible idea, personally. Tl:dr I think that easier versions of the raids would help raid engagement, and possibly bring people back or at least get more people raiding. I dunno. Maybe I’m talking out of my rear end? I also doubt that Bungie in its current state would have the vision, desire or competency to implement these ideas, sadly.

[quote]Put matchmaking for everything. Find a way for us to do raids or dungeons or whatever without a mic, with obvious and easy mechanics. Onslaught and coil are good examples, many people liked them, except for limited revives. More people will play. As it is, only 10% of people do raids, more or less. Because many players aren’t good enough period. Just let everyone do everything, with a scaling reward system like NFs, to get more rewards for harder difficulty. That’s what my 21 year old son thinks. He doesn’t like raiding because you need a mic. The game is pretty dead now, need to have different train of thought for upcoming content.[/quote] Quality of life changes. 1. All nightfall adept weapons are able to be purchased every week as long as you have 10 adept tokens. Same with trials. You shouldn't have to wait until the week that specific weapon drops. Also, tokens should be maxed out at 30 and should go to the postmaster. 2. Trade ascendant shards for alloys, even exchange. Cut the costs of shards, alloys, and prisms. 4. This a big one... let us distribute the stats on an armor piece. If I get a 70 stat armor piece, I can use all 70 for intellect if I want. Or 30, 30, 10. Get it. Let us decide. 5. Get rid of stupid ships unless we actually shoot enemies with them. The entire "I'm in orbit look at my ship" has worn out it's welcome. 6. Old prophecy weapons we can enhance but not warlord's ruin?!?! Every weapon is enhanceable... even on exotics. Yes, I want enhanced destabilizing rounds on choir of one. Also my old palindrome...enhanceable. 7. Respawn timer needs to be 6 seconds or less in none pvp activities. It's minor but annoying, especially in dungeons. 8. This a big one. Actually, it's one of my main points. Once you beat a master boss like nezarec ect, that entire week you have access to buy adepts from the chest even on normal. 9. Have Xur have artiface armor more often and...Buy spoils from Xur!!!!!!! 10. More buffs and less nerfs. The game is nearly dead. Just look at the fireteam finder section. Sad. Reverse anarchy, div, winterbite, ect. And make gally a beast again. Shax would shake his head if he knew gally was being used as a support rocker launcher...lmao. It's meant to be a dps monster.

[quote]Put matchmaking for everything. Find a way for us to do raids or dungeons or whatever without a mic, with obvious and easy mechanics. Onslaught and coil are good examples, many people liked them, except for limited revives. More people will play. As it is, only 10% of people do raids, more or less. Because many players aren’t good enough period. Just let everyone do everything, with a scaling reward system like NFs, to get more rewards for harder difficulty. That’s what my 21 year old son thinks. He doesn’t like raiding because you need a mic. The game is pretty dead now, need to have different train of thought for upcoming content.[/quote] You can already do dungeons without a mic. Removing mechanics from raids makes them no longer raids. That’s not even close to the actual raiding statistic.

Warframe does this and does it really well - you get four options: 1) Purely solo 2) Public matchmaking 3) Private matchmaking (friends and clan) 4) Invite only And this is for ALL content in the game I can't see anything in this that would upset anyone by not allowing for 'tailored' groups or make anyone feel left out, so not doing it really comes down to a competency issue...

Bungie needs to stop making game they want to play and start making a customers want to play.

[quote]Find a way for us to do raids or dungeons or whatever without a mic, with obvious and easy mechanics.[/quote] That would make raids and dungeons absolutely pointless.

it would be hilarious to see people try to figure out raid mechanics with random 6 people... lol i can see this being a hilarious experience of keyboard warriors typing to each other how to do it. It would be worth streaming watching the struggles.

What does matchmaking give the player that in game lfg and guided games cannot?

So add guided games that is already in the game? The matchmaking feature for raids that nobody uses?

[quote]Put matchmaking for everything. Find a way for us to do raids or dungeons or whatever without a mic, with obvious and easy mechanics. Onslaught and coil are good examples, many people liked them, except for limited revives. More people will play. As it is, only 10% of people do raids, more or less. Because many players aren’t good enough period. Just let everyone do everything, with a scaling reward system like NFs, to get more rewards for harder difficulty. That’s what my 21 year old son thinks. He doesn’t like raiding because you need a mic. The game is pretty dead now, need to have different train of thought for upcoming content.[/quote] So, easy mode? You want them to add an easy mode? Is that what I'm hearing right now?

I raid without a mic tho... Yeah I sometimes get kicked but when they see I know what I'm doing it typically goes by fine.

I agree, Bungie should do this. It'll make for some interesting posts to read on the forum if nothing else.