There’s no doubt that the debate surrounding Skill Based Matchmaking is very complicated, and there is no clear cut solution to it. But the current matchmaking system in Destiny quite frankly doesn’t work, and we need change. From what I can understand, Destiny’s skill based matchmaking is based on an internal ELO system for each individual playlist. Since we have no way of accessing this data, I will be referring to K/D and W/L stats as indicators of skill in this post. The main issue with SBMM that affects everyone, is the fact that it causes latency. Many Destiny players have routers that can pinpoint the location of all players in a lobby, and I frequently hear from my (European) friends that they are matching people from the Middle East, the US west coast, East Asia and even Australia. The system appears to weigh skill so highly, that it completely throws connection out of the window when it puts these lobbies together. What’s worse is that this isn’t just an issue for the Top 1% players. Even the most average players, with K/D ratios of roughly 1 and Win/Loss ratios at 50%, experience massive amounts of lag. Players at this skill level should have the biggest pool of players to match up against, yet the game still manages to match them against opponents from across the world. This issue is of course worst for the Top 1%. There are so few players to match them up against, which means that a game without lag has become a rare exception. It's no secret that latency seems to favor the players who are lagging. Lag is frustrating no matter the game, but in Destiny it is game breaking. At this point in Destiny’s life span, the players base will only get smaller, and problems like this will become even more prevalent. Another issue that I personally have with Skill Based Matchmaking, is that it doesn’t fit the Crucible whatsoever. I’m fairly confident when I say, Destiny PvP wasn’t designed to be a competitive shooter like Halo, but rather a fun sandbox with a variety of weaponry, armor and perks to try out. But inevitably, some of this gear is stronger than other gear. By forcing this semi-competitive matchmaking down people’s throats, you also discourage variety. Once again, this is an issue that affects the Top 1% the most. When going up against highly skilled players, the game becomes a match of split seconds, and is often determined by who makes the least errors. But if your weapon is inferior to that of the opponent, you quite simply do not stand a chance. The result is that everyone uses the same 3 or 4 weapons in every single match. It waters down the game, and makes it less than what it is. I for one, fell in love with a game that had tonnes of variety. It used to be fun to challenge myself by taking a weaker weapon into the Crucible and seeing how well I could do. I no longer do that, because I already know the outcome. I will get matched against opponents who are all using a Matador with a low impact Pulse Rifle or a Hand Cannon, and I will have a horrible time. There’s nothing wrong with certain guns being more popular, but when players feel forced into using a small handful of loadouts, it kills the longevity of the game. Something that should never become an issue in a game that, at its core, has so much variety. Not only that, but the game becomes very exhausting, very quickly, when you have to play every match like its an MLG final. Don’t get me wrong, some of my most memorable moments in the Crucible have been those super close matches that came down to the wire, or the incredible comebacks when we brought it back from a massive deficit, only to emerge victorious. But while those matches are memorable, they are usually followed quickly by a sigh of relief. They are exhausting, and if every match is like that it stops being fun and becomes highly frustrating instead. While I understand that there has to be a degree of protection for weaker players, it shouldn’t be at the expense of the veterans of the game. The players who have been there since day one, poured thousands of hours into your game and acted as ambassadors for the community. While these players are a minority, I am certain that they are responsible for a very significant percentage of total hours played in the Crucible. I fit into this group, many of my friends do too, and I speak for many of us when I say, we feel like we have been shafted for almost a year now. Many have quit the game entirely. Most have resorted to only playing on weekends when Trials of Osiris is live. The Crucible simply isn’t for us anymore. But with all that said, its not just the Top 1% that have issues with skill based matchmaking. I hear many of my friends, who have a more casual approach to PvP, venting their frustrations about the matchmaking system. Not only do they also experience connectivity issues, but they also feel like they can no longer play with friends of higher skill level than themselves. The weaker players in a fireteam don’t stand a chance against the competition when playing with highly skilled friends. Not only is this not fun for the weaker players, but it also handicaps the stronger players significantly, as they have far less support than usual. No one wins. To be fair, the matchmaking system seemingly attempts to average out the fireteams ELO, but from my experience, it weighs the higher skilled players more heavily. Bottom line is, its not fun for anyone. Another issue that some average players have taken with SBMM, is that slows their improvement and removes the sense of progression. Playing against players better than yourself is the best way to improve. If matchmaking shields players from going against better players, it also means they never get these learning experiences. And when they do manage to improve, they don’t even feel it, as they have simply been moved up in the ranks of SBMM. And if you ask me, it should feel rewarding when you improve. When you beat that really difficult boss in Dark Souls, when you get an A on your test, or get a promotion after months of hard work, you feel accomplished. Your hard work has paid off. In Destiny, you rarely ever get that sense of accomplishment anymore. Everyone started somewhere. Even if its hard to believe at times, even the best of the best got stomped in a PvP game at some point. I personally remember getting destroyed for 3 months in a row on Call of Duty. I didn’t mind at the time. As a matter of fact, I was motivated to do better, and when I went positive for the first time after playing the game for months, I felt very accomplished. Destiny, as a whole, tries to shield new players from failure. Failure is reserved for the elite players who play the Raid on a regular basis, and compete in High-end PvP activities. That is a mistake in my opinion. Failure can be frustrating, but is there truly any success without failure? (Wow, that got really deep) So how would I change matchmaking? Well, at this point in the game, I think Bungie has to everything in their power to ensure good connections above all. Initially, resetting matchmaking settings to how they were in Year 1 would be a good solution. There was definitely still a degree of SBMM back then, but it was nowhere near as bad as it is today. I must admit I don’t understand why this was changed in the first place. I’ve been active in the community ever since the Alpha, and never heard a single complaint about matchmaking until SBMM was introduced last December. Anyway, to go along with a matchmaking change, an improvement to the team balancing algorithm would be in order. There’s nothing wrong with players of all skill levels being in the same lobby, as long as there’s a good mix of skill levels on both teams. Win/Loss preservation also has to go in my opinion. This is a system that essentially creates lob sided matches, to ensure that all players have a win/loss ratio somewhere between 40- and 60%. This goes against the very nature of a game. What’s the point of playing, when the match has already been decided before it starts? And if possible, matchmaking fireteams against other fireteams would be a welcome change too. At the moment, you match a full fireteam far too frequently while playing solo, and, ironically, this rarely happens when you’re in a fireteam yourself. If matchmaking could prioritize matching fireteams vs fireteams, without it impacting connection too much, it would vastly improve the experience of solo players, and also go a long way to avoiding blowouts. Another major change that could really improve connection, would be to replace the 6 main Crucible playlists, with 3 unified playlists: 6v6 featuring Clash, Control, Supremacy and Rift, 3v3 featuring Skirmish and Salvage, and of course Rumble being the third and final playlist. This way, the remaining playerbase wouldn’t be spread to thinly across playlists for the remainder of Destiny 1. For Destiny 2, the best solution would undoubtedly be Ranked and Social playlists. Preferably with dedicated servers too. Those are my opinions on sbmm. I’m sure some of you disagree, and I would encourage you to use the outlets you have available to you, such as the Bungie forums or Reddit, to voice your own opinion too. No one will gain anything from throwing hate at each other in the comments, so lets keep the debate civilized, and hopefully help Bungie come up with a solution that will all of us. In the end, we all want what’s best for the game! - ApexCris