I've made this post before but after a few months I wanted to make it again just to reaffirm my stance and to get people talking about this topic. A lot of you on the forum know me as ben, I play on pc and I pretty much only play PvP. I spend pretty much all of my time in rumble - I am #1 in rumble on pc according to guardian.gg and #5 across all platforms according to destinytracker. If you want to look at my stats in detail you can look up "6 god ben" on the website of your choice, it will be my steam name for a while and I should be the only one with it. After a lot of time in PvP, it has become abundantly clear to me that purely connection-based matchmaking is not good for destiny's PvP. From what I can tell from playing a lot and from spending a lot of time on here reading what people have to say, the current algorithm that is present in most crucible playlists does a very good job at pushing casual/average players away from the game. As an example, please look at the PGCR from a rumble game I played today: https://guardian.gg/2/pgcr/8966356596 . This is one of the most flagrantly unfair lobbies I have been in in a very long time. I joined this game down 9 and won the game in 3 minutes - these players were very clearly brand new to the game and were not even trying to shoot back. As you can see from their elo ratings, this lobby had 2 bronze, 3 iron, 1 gold, and 1 DIAMOND player. Im willing to bet everyone in this lobby had less than 300 hours on the game compared to me with 2000 on steam alone. When lobbies like this happen, people stop wanting to play. They are left with the notion that PvP is a place for tryhards, and that casuals or new players like them do not belong. I don't care how good you are at the game, how much of an ego you have, how much you enjoy shitstomping people who don't shoot back at you - this is unhealthy for the game, period. You can say the game caters to casuals and I agree that it does; the sandbox has a lot of very forgiving and easy to use weapons and abilities that definitely cater to the low skilled player. But this doesn't matter because they still don't stand a chance against someone who has been playing way longer than them and who is way better. And the thing is, I don't even think this matchmaking is beneficial to the skilled player's experience either. I understand the appeal of pubstomping, don't get me wrong, but is it REALLY worth jeopardizing the casual experience so that you can absolutely stomp every lobby without even trying? Does it not get old? Because I think it gets old. Rumble is a time passer for me, but it is not engaging or intense or demanding whatsoever. The rumble games that I enjoy the most are lobbies with 1 or 2 other good players, on a small map where you can't run away from eachother and can only win by proving that you are better in 1v1 scenarios and better at controlling the map. I win just about every single game, this week my record is 119 wins and 3 losses, and Id say maybe one out of every ten games is one where I actually have to try? Very, very rarely do I really have to fully go for it and go full focus in order to win a game. Winning games is rarely satisfying, it is just normal and the satisfying games are ones against good players. There is nothing satisfying to me about demolishing new players, and I wish people of my skill level felt the same because your pubstomping is not worth the death of the game because everyone gets pushed away. It is especially problematic when you consider the fact that, for the casual player, there is no where they can go in the crucible director to escape this unfair experience. Every single playlist is extremely CBMM heavy. You can make the argument that we have seen what destiny was like with skill based matchmaking being so intense that lobbies were way too laggy and I am not going to act like I forgot. Putting skill based back into the algorithm and making the connection based matchmaking a little less intense is definitely risky with destiny's playerbase. But I think it is worth the risk, just to try. Even if its just in a couple playlists. I don't have any statistics handy regarding the average crucible player count across every season and frankly I do not care. If it is true that the crucible player count is the highest it has ever been, regardless of how bad matchmaking is for the casual player, then so be it. I find it hard to believe but I know the numbers don't lie. I just want to make the point that, even from my perspective, it is clear that the matchmaking is unfair. Thanks for reading my rant. TL:DR Crucible matchmaking is too punishing to the casual player, it leaves them with no where to go if they want to improve without playing against people leagues ahead of them in skill and experience. Edit: In regards to the "you improve from losing against better players" argument, it is a good point but it only applies to a certain extent and is somewhat flawed in destiny specifically. My detailed reply to this argument is here - https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/259430040/0/0/1 I also deleted a bunch of text because I typed this on my computer and didnt realize how brutal the walls of text looked on mobile